THE 1998 CAMPAIGN: SENATE

Published: November 8, 1998

(Page 2 of 3)

Earlier this year, Mr. D'Amato had assured worried friends in the Senate that Mr. Schumer would be an easy opponent. In the days after the Democratic primary, his aides said privately that they had considered Mr. Schumer -- a liberal Jewish Democrat from Brooklyn with a 20-year voting record to examine -- a far easier mark than his main rival for the Democratic nomination, Geraldine A. Ferraro.

But by the end of business on the Monday before Election Day, after a campaign in which Mr. D'Amato had outspent Mr. Schumer by almost 2 to 1, it was the Democratic challenger who was flush with excitement, dancing at a rally with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Manhattan. At 5 P.M. that day, Mr. Schumer impulsively ordered his campaign plane into the air for one more rally in Buffalo.

At about the same time on Long Island, Mr. D'Amato had just given up speaking at a rally after a discouraging 15 minutes in which two sound systems set up by the political machine that produced him had given out. As Mr. Schumer headed for Buffalo, Mr. D'Amato called it a day.

Seven weeks before Election Day, Mr. Morris was in a television production studio on West 43d Street. That day, Democrats across New York were choosing Mr. D'Amato's challenger. But Mr. Morris, who at 45 is the most active political consultant in the state -- and is known for appearing at even black-tie events wearing a rumpled sweater -- was producing advertisements for the general campaign.

The advertisements that went on the air two days later offered the first clue that Mr. D'Amato was in for a different kind of challenge. Brash and counterintuitive, they portrayed Mr. D'Amato as soft on crime and as an advocate of higher taxes, turning a traditional D'Amato attack against him. They ended with the line, ''Too many lies for too long.''

The theme had been settled on two weeks earlier, by which time Mr. Schumer and his advisers had concluded that his victory in the Democratic primary was assured. But in tone and sweep, the advertisements were the product of the two years Mr. Schumer had spent studying Mr. D'Amato's previous campaigns and the attitudes of voters toward him.

There was a flicker of apprehension among some of Mr. Schumer's aides when Mr. Morris suggested building a campaign around a slogan describing New York's leading Republican as a liar. Mr. Morris halfheartedly suggested a softer alternative -- ''too wrong for too long.''

But the ''too many lies'' theme played directly to what the Schumer campaign had concluded were two of Mr. D'Amato's biggest liabilities: voters didn't trust him and thought he had been in office too long.

It was also designed as a broad pre-emptive defense against any attack Mr. D'Amato might make. And it telegraphed to audiences who were skeptical that Mr. Schumer could beat Mr. D'Amato -- financial contributors, Democratic workers, the media and, of course, Mr. D'Amato -- the tenor of the campaign Mr. Schumer intended to run.

Mr. Schumer's research had found that many voters admired Mr. D'Amato's bracing political style, and he set out to co-opt it. ''If you ask people what kind of vehicle he reminded them of, the people who don't like him say 'a Cadillac' or 'a Lincoln,' '' said Mr. Morris, referring to Mr. D'Amato. ''People who do like him -- and the swing voters -- said 'a bulldozer.' ''

So Mr. Schumer set out to be a bulldozer.

That attitude permeated the Schumer campaign. At his Manhattan headquarters, Mr. Schumer's press secretary, Howard Wolfson, would repeatedly cite a line from the movie ''The Untouchables'' in rallying the troops. ''If he uses a fist, you use a bat,'' Mr. Wolfson said each day. ''If he uses a knife, you use a gun.''

Before the second of the two senatorial debates, Mr. Isay asked Mark Green, the city's Public Advocate and Mr. D'Amato's most persistent foe, to come to the WNBC studios and stand in Mr. D'Amato's line of vision, hoping to rattle him.

There were bad moments. Mr. Schumer's campaign was flummoxed when Mr. D'Amato began assailing him for missing votes in Congress to run for the Senate. It affected the mood in both camps. Mr. D'Amato and his advisers went from listless to ebullient as Mr. Schumer's aides were forced daily to respond to the missed votes cited by Mr. D'Amato.

While Mr. Schumer's aides asserted that they were not worried about the attacks, other Democrats observed that the campaign was no longer about Mr. D'Amato's record and credibility; it was now about Mr. Schumer's behavior in Congress. Some of Mr. Schumer's friends began to worry that Mr. D'Amato had again found the hook with which to drag down his opponent.

That concern faded the morning when Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, the Manhattan Democrat whom Mr. D'Amato had mocked as overweight, called Mr. Isay and informed him of the story that was about to appear in The Jewish Week.

Mr. D'Amato and his campaign first tried to shrug off the report of the Yiddish slur and his subsequent denial of it, responding to every question with another attack on Mr. Schumer's attendance record. But inside the campaign's offices on Lexington Avenue, Mr. D'Amato's aides were shaken by what almost everyone believed was a huge misstep.